Culture&Society

The Hindutva View of History

Rewriting Textbooks in India and the United States
Kamala Visweswaran, Michael Witzel, Nandini
Manjrekar, Dipta Bhog, and Uma Chakravarti
When Hindu nationalist (or Sangh Parivar) organizations Kamala Visweswaran
is an associate profes-
in India came to power at the national level in 1998, one sor of anthropology at
of the first things they did was to establish a National the University of Texas,
Austin.
Curriculum Framework (NCF) to change textbook content.
Michael Witzel is a
The 2000 NCF curriculum debate reflected the intense professor of Sanskrit at
conflict between competing visions of national identity that Harvard University.
had dominated India’s public and political discourse over Nandini Manjrekar is
the previous two decades. In a significant departure from an assosciate professor
at the Tata Institue of
earlier curriculum frameworks of 1972 and 1986, which Social Sciences, Mum-
bai.
stressed democratic values, social justice, and national
integration through appreciation of the commonalities of Dipta Bhog is a co-
director of Nirantar: A
different subcultures, the principal focus of the NCF was Centre for Gender and
“value education.”1 The chief end of history, as of education Education in Delhi.

as a whole, was presented as the development of a “national Uma Chakravati is

professor emeritus of
spirit” and “national consciousness” through generating history at the Miranda
pride in the younger generation regarding India’s past and House at Delhi Uni-
versity.
its unique “religio-philosophical ethos, which was presented
as primarily Hindu.”2 These actions were vociferously chal-
lenged by academics and progressive, secular, liberal, or left
groups who decried the Sangh Parivar’s ideological efforts to
recast history.
In the summer and fall months of 2005, U.S. “Hindu”

Winter/Spring 2009 [ 1 0 1 ]
the hindutva view of history

organizations with Sangh ties appeared the World Hindu Council, or Vishwa
at California Board of Education hear- Hindu Parishad, was founded in 1964.
ings, claiming that California text- The political arm of the movement
books discriminated against Hindus was founded as the Jana Sangh in 1956,
and presented a demeaning image of but reorganized as the Indian People’s
Hinduism. While there were indeed Party or Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
problems with the representation of in 1980. Members of Sangh Parivar-
Hinduism in the textbooks, the over- related organizations have been indicted
all aim of the changes proposed by in numerous incidents of mass violence
the Hindu Education Foundation and against Christian and Muslim minori-
the Vedic Foundation was to propa- ties in India and a former RSS mem-
gate false notions of Indian history, ber assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in
including the idea that “Aryans” were 1948.4 The Sangh Parivar increasingly
the original or indigenous inhabitants attempts to present a more benign face
of India, and that the core essence of through charity and educational work,
Hinduism could be found in the Vedic and has set up several partner organiza-
religion of the Aryans. tions in the United States, among them
We will argue that these textbook the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America
edits attempt to manufacture a majori- (founded in 1976 and now headquar-
tarian view of society in which the cul-tered in Iselin, New Jersey), the Hindu
tural and political space for minoritiesSwayamsevak Sangh (founded about 1980
will progressively shrink. The ongoing and headquartered in Rockaway, New
violence against Muslims in Gujarat, Jersey) and the Overseas Friends of the
where the Sangh Parivar’s political arm,BJP (headquartered in Edison, New
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) first Jersey).5
came into office in the mid-1990s, and In 1998, the BJP came to power at the
elsewhere in India, suggests that such anational level and, for the second time,
curriculum creates a setting in which in Gujarat, where RSS-affiliated chief
social intolerance and injustices against
ministers, including current Gujarat
minorities can be justified. U.S. leg- Chief Minister Narendra Modi have
islators, policy-makers, and educators held power for much of the past decade.
must therefore be particularly vigilant The Sangh rise to power in Gujarat
about the transplantation of this ideol-and at the national level resulted in
ogy to the United States in a post-9/11 two things: first, the discriminatory
climate.3 or unequal application of law to target
Muslim and Christian groups; and,
Sangh Parivar in India and the second, the systematic revision of text-
United States. The Sangh Parivar books at the national and state level.6
refers to the family of Hindu national- Although violence against Christians in
ist organizations created beginning in the last few months has been particu-
1926 with the founding of the National larly pronounced in BJP-led states like
Volunteers Organization or Rashtriya Orissa, the BJP sometimes distances
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The cultural itself from the more extreme actions
and religious branch of the movement, of its fellow Sangh Parivar organiza-

[ 1 02 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

 Visweswaran, witzel, manjrekar, bhog, chakravarti
tions. While some scholars and politi-
cal observers consider the BJP to be a
moderate force in Indian politics, an
analysis of its role in textbook revisions
in India shows that it firmly subscribes
to the basic tenets of Hindu national-
ist ideology and its revisionist view of
history.
The systematic rewriting of history is
a critical component of Hindu nation-
alist ideology. Its guiding concept,
Hindutva (“Hinduness”) calls for India’s
former untouchables, Christians, and
Muslims to be assimilated, expelled, or
annihilated so that a Hindu majority
nation is transformed into an exclu-
sively Hindu nation.7 To do so requires
the construction of a history that ren-
ders India as “Hindu,” and collapses the
distinction between history and reli-
gious myth. Hindutva history describes
Christians and Muslims as “foreigners”
The systematic rewriting of history is a
critical component of Hindu nationalist ide-
ology.
and portrays medieval India as a period
of Muslim despotism and decline.
When the BJP first came to power in
1998, Sangh sympathizers were placed
on the National Council for Education
and Research Training (NCERT),
the school curriculum development
and review body at the national level.
Over the next several years, NCERT
introduced changes to the school cur-
ricula in alignment with the Sangh’s
agenda.8 States with BJP governments
implemented these and other changes.
In 2001, Goa’s BJP chief minister,
Manohar Parrikar, turned manage-
Culture&Society
ment of fifty-one government primary
schools in rural areas to the Vidya
Bharati Educational Trust—the Sangh
Parivar’s educational wing. With the
defeat of the BJP at the national level in
2004, some of these textbook changes
have been reversed. Ironically, some
of the same textbook changes that were
in the process of being revised in India
were being attempted for the first time
in the United States. Below we summa-
rize the efforts to rewrite Indian history
in India and the United States.
The Hindutva Rewriting of
Textbooks in India. While many
of India’s textbooks over the past dec-
ades have been of poor quality and con-
tained factually incorrect information
or negative stereotypes, the systematic
rewriting of history is a critical com-
ponent of Hindu nationalist educa-
tion. For many decades, the grassroots
organizations and educational institu-
tions run by the RSS—the Saraswati Shishu
Mandirs and Vidya Bharati primary and sec-
ondary schools—have sought to spread a
Hindu-centric version of Indian his-
tory. For example, “some books for
elementary school students portrayed
all communities other than the Hindus
as foreigners in India…These books,
in the name of instilling patriotism
and valor among Indians, spread false-
hoods, treat mythological religious fig-
ures like actual historical figures and
make absurd claims such as that the
Winter/Spring 2009 [ 1 0 3]
the hindutva view of history
struggle for India’s freedom became a
‘religious war’ against Muslims.”9 The
United States Department of State’s
International Religious Freedom
reports of 2003 and 2004 describe the
Sangh efforts to revise curriculum in
India as threats to religious freedom.10
The curriculum designed by the NCF
in 2000 and the textbooks published
a year later also interchanged the roles
assigned to science and spirituality. The
earlier emphasis on science—seen as
essential to the creation of a rational,
modern, and enlightened society—was
supplanted in the new framework by
the idea of a unique and distinctive
“Indian tradition” based on formu-
laic notions of spirituality and religion
and a conservative social bias. The new
framework was severely criticized for
violating the constitutional commit-
ment to secularism by advocating the
idea of religion-based value educa-
tion as a crucial factor in the syllabi.
Value education, however, was integral
to the NCF’s plan, its main plank to
launch the spiritual and moral renewal
of India. It was only through learning
of the “lives of prophets, saints and the
sacred texts” that children could achieve
higher SQs (Spiritual Quotients) and
EQs (Emotional Quotients).11
While the implementation of the
NCF curriculum on a national level
was stayed by the Supreme Court on
1 March 2002 on the ground that
the NCF had not sought the manda-
tory approval of the Central Advisory
Board of Education, states with BJP
governments were already implement-
ing changes to social science and his-
tory textbooks that followed the broad
guidelines of the NCF 2000 curricu-
lum.
[ 1 04 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
The BJP government in Gujarat was
one of the first to revise its textbooks
with a decidedly Hindu nationalist
frame. The first book in the revised
series, the social science textbook for
class eight, focuses on the most radi-
cal elements of the movement against
British colonial rule, carrying images of
several of the movement’s most militant
leaders on its cover. Recent editions of
the Gujarat social studies books suggest
a close association between terrorism
and Muslim identity, including preju-
dicial statements such as: “Gujarat is a
border state. Its land and sea boundar-
ies touch the boundaries of Pakistan
which is like a den of terrorism. Under
such circumstances, it is absolutely nec-
essary for us to understand the effects of
terrorism and the role of citizens in the
fight against it.”12
History textbooks in Gujarat and
Uttar Pradesh regularly conflate myth
and historical fact. The Dandi Salt
March led by Gandhi in 1931, a high
point in the nationalist struggle, for
example, is conflated with Lord Ram’s
mythical progress to Panchvati. Such
comparisons have the effect of sacral-
izing an important event in secular
nationalism while attaching a historical
dateline to mythic events.13 The Gujarat
State fifth grade social studies textbook
has nine stories on mythology masquer-
ading as history.14
The Hindutva movement also has
historic links to Italian and German
forms of fascism from the 1920s and
1930s, and another form of textbook
revision can be seen in its treatment
of fascism.15 Prashant, a Jesuit NGO
based in Ahmedabad, undertook an
analysis of Gujarati class nine text-
books in 2005 and found several dis-
 Visweswaran, witzel, manjrekar, bhog, chakravarti
tortions and omissions on this count:
“There is no mention of Hitler’s role
in the concentration camps, the holo-
caust and the extermination of millions
of Jews; in fact, the role of Hitler is
seen as always positive.”16 Similarly,
the Gujarat state class ten social stud-
ies textbooks contained chapters titled
“Hitler, the Supremo” and “Internal
Achievements of Nazism” where Nazi
administrative efficiency is lauded. The
Holocaust is not mentioned by name,
but “the gruesome and inhuman act of
suffocating 60 lakh [6 million] Jews in
gas chambers” is noted. The section on
“Ideology of Nazism” translates Hitler’s
title of “Fuhrer” as “Savior.”17
Finally, in the Gujarat textbooks,
caste is rendered as a benign social
arrangement. Although caste discrim-
ination (casteism) is identified as a
“social evil,” it is seen as a corruption
of varnashrama, the Vedic system of four
hierarchically ranked classes that forms
the basis and justification for the caste
system. A 1997 social studies text says,
“These distinctions have persisted in
spite of the attempts made by reform-
ers to remove them. Yet, the impor-
tance of the ‘varna’ system as an ideal
system of building the social and eco-
nomic structure of a society cannot be
overlooked.”18
States where the BJP has come to
power have followed the Gujarat model.
Textbooks in the state of Rajasthan,
where the BJP became the ruling party
in 2003 have been revised to incor-
porate Hindu nationalist views. Other
states where the BJP is in power have
pledged to ignore the 2005 National
Curriculum Framework set by NCERT
and to use their own textbooks.19
Culture&Society
The Hindutva Attempt to
Rewrite Textbooks in the
United States. In India the strat-
egy to rewrite textbooks has come from
government branches and agencies con-
trolled by the BJP and its allied organi-
zations, which have relied upon the
grassroots network of Sangh charities
and educational institutions to carry
them out. In the United States, the
call for rewriting textbooks has appar-
ently come from Hindu parents who
feel the books demean or misrepresent
Hinduism. The first known case charg-
ing anti-Hindu bias in U.S. textbooks
occurred in Fairfax County, Virginia
in 2004. Scholars from George Mason
University and Georgetown University
were consulted and, while they found
some difficulties with the textbooks,
they recommended that the school
board adopt them.20 In September of
that same year, however, the Educator’s
Society for the Heritage of India
(ESHI), which has links to many Sangh-
affiliated institutions in the United
States and India,21 held a conference
at Rutgers University to plan a strategy
for challenging the representation of
Hinduism in California, Texas, and
Florida state textbooks.22 The 2004
conference, which included officials
from the New Jersey Department of
Education, also featured representa-
tion from other Sangh-affiliated orga-
nizations, including a speaker from the
Vedic Foundation in Austin, Texas,
which would play a major role in the
California textbook debate.23 It is evi-
dent, then, that the California cam-
paign emerged less as the effort of
concerned Hindu parents, and more
as the outcome of concerted planning
and preparation from Hindu national-
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the hindutva view of history
ist organizations in the United States.
While we do not wish to discount the
legitimate questions Hindu parents
may have about the representation of
Hinduism in textbooks, it is of consid-
erable concern that parents and state
education officials may unknowingly be
working with Hindutva, or Hindutva-
led organizations.
The California State Board of
Education (CBE) reviews educational
materials for its core subjects (History
and Social Science, Mathematics,
Reading and Language Arts, and Science)
every six years. In 2005, the history and
social science texts were up for evalua-
tion. Over the summer of 2005, the
Hindu Education Foundation (HEF)
and the Vedic Foundation (VF) of
Austin, Texas, wrote to the California
Department of Education Curriculum
alleging that California sixth grade text-
books contained errors and stereotypi-
cal views of Hindus. As mandated, the
figure 1: The Sangh Parivar’s U.S. Connections†
[ 1 06 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
CBE makes the proposed textbooks
available for public scrutiny and com-
mentary. During public hearings at
the end of September 2005, repre-
sentatives of several Islamic, Jewish,
and “Hindu” organizations testified to
problematic aspects of the educational
materials. The HEF and VF proposed
a large number of changes to the text-
books. In the end, some 160 edits were
submitted and taken up for review by
the California authorities.
The California State Board of
Education appointed an ad hoc review
panel to vet proposed textbook changes
with Dr. Shiva Bajpai, a retired pro-
fessor at California State University,
Northridge, and a member of the
World Association for Vedic Studies
(WAVES), an organization known for
its Hindutva ties.24 Dr. Bajpai endorsed
most of the changes proposed by the
HEF and VF, including a number that
were historically inaccurate. The most
 Visweswaran, witzel, manjrekar, bhog, chakravarti
important and contentious of the edits,
as in India, was the attempt to say
that the earliest and most sophisticated
civilization in ancient India, the Indus-
valley civilization, was contemporary
with Aryan or Vedic civilization—thus
claiming the achievements of the former
as “Aryan” and, in so doing, ignoring
the historical evidence that Aryans had
migrated to India from Central Asia.
The HEF and VF revisions thus sought
to pose the Vedic texts of the Aryans as
proof that early Hinduism was the old-
est or “indigenous” religion, erasing
adivasi (aboriginal or “first peoples”)
histories, and presenting South Asian
Christians and Muslims who have lived
in India for centuries as “outsiders.”
Further, the rewrites to the California
curriculum glossed over gender and
caste hierarchies in ancient Indian his-
tory, excised references to caste and
gender inequalities in contemporary
India, and deleted the word dalit (former
“untouchable” castes) from textbooks
altogether. The historically accurate
description of women in ancient India
as having fewer rights than men was
changed to “other rights than men.”25
Perhaps most seriously, the text pre-
sented the many varieties of Hinduism
as a monolithic, monotheistic religion
of “one God: his name is Bhagwan,”
marginalizing the multiple female and
male deities that Hindus throughout
India worship.26 Many of the HEF/
VF edits sought to emphasize a Vedic
form of Hinduism, which contains a
religious justification for the caste sys-
tem, while at the same time attempting
to de-link Hinduism from the caste
system and then minimizing or elimi-
nating mention of the effects of caste
discrimination upon lower caste and
Culture&Society
dalit communities.
The edits of VF/HEF as sanctioned
by Dr. Bajpai were scheduled for a final
vote on 9 November 2005. A few days
prior to that vote, though, scholars
who had been alerted to the impend-
ing politicized edits sent a letter of
protest to the CBE signed by forty-sev-
en South Asia specialists from around
the world, many of them Sanskritists,
Indologists, or historians of India.27
In response, the CBE suspended the
ratification process, and appointed a
three-member faculty committee con-
sisting of Dr. Michael Witzel (Harvard),
Dr. Stanley Wolpert (UCLA), and Dr.
James Heitzman (UC-Davis) to review
the changes. That committee’s report,
delivered in November, rescinded most
of the VF/HEF edits.28 A group of 109
U.S.-based South Asia scholars sent
a letter to the CBE on 30 November,
urging it to accept the faculty commit-
tee’s recommendations.29
The CBE held several public hear-
ings between December 2005 and 8
March 2006, at which a number of
U.S. Sangh-affiliated groups and oth-
ers testified. However, the Sangh orga-
nizations put enormous pressure on
the board, and it caved in to what it saw
as popular sentiment by accepting most
of the VF/HEF edits.
This did not stop the protests against
the California edits, however. Another
letter sent on 7 December 2005, signed
this time by 146 U.S.-based scholars of
South Asia expressed concern about the
CBE decision30 and asked it to formally
reconsider.31 In subsequent CBE meet-
ings in January and February, numer-
ous other Indian and South Asian com-
munity organizations also testified,32
contesting the Hindutva view of Indian
Winter/Spring 2009 [ 1 0 7 ]
the hindutva view of history
history; and a group of South Asia
scholars submitted two reports to the
CBE detailing flaws in the textbook
revisions.33 This ultimately led the CBE
to reverse its initial opinion and aban-
don most of the HEF/VF changes.
A lawsuit later filed against the CBE
by the Hindu American Foundation, a
group with links to both the HEF and
VF, was ruled invalid on all four major
points of contention. In a lengthy,
well-reasoned opinion the court called
the proposed changes unscholarly.34 In
the spring of 2006, a new Hindutva-
affiliated organiation, California
Parents for Equalization of Educational
Materials (CAPEEM), launched
another case in California Federal
Court alleging discrimination against
Hindus in California textbooks.35 This
case is still pending and may be resolved
in early 2009.
Conclusions. While Hindutva as a
form of aggressive and militant nation-
alism is focused on the capture of state
power in India, it is less clear what its
The historically accurate description of
women in ancient India as having fewer rights
than men was changed to “other rights than
men.”
aims are as a transnational movement,
beyond appeals to the U.S. Indian
diaspora to support its various projects
in India. Why then, should U.S. citi-
zens and residents be concerned about
the infiltration of Hindu national-
ist ideas in U.S. schools? While the
United States appropriately recognizes
freedom of expression, regardless of
[ 1 08 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
the content of that expression, it can-
not condone the teaching of ideas that
foster and justify prejudice and intoler-
ance toward minority groups. Textbook
revisions in India which have been suc-
cessfully introduced into the United
States deliberately conflate pride in
Hinduism with Hindu superiority. As
one of the co-authors of this paper has
discovered, ideas of Hindu superior-
ity encourage college students in Texas
who have absorbed them to be suspi-
cious and intolerant toward Muslims
and other Indian minorities in the
United States.36
The most important area of over-
lap between the textbook revisions in
India and those in California was the
ideological effort to make “Aryans” the
progenitors of the Indus Valley civiliza-
tion, thereby establishing them as the
indigenous originators of a “Hindu” India
and rendering Christians and Muslims
as “foreigners.”
Yet there were also points of diver-
gence in the strategies for rewriting
history. Textbooks in Gujarat present
the caste system as an achievement of
Aryan civilization, while the tendency
of Hindutva groups in the United States
was to erase evidence of the connection
between Hinduism and the caste sys-
tem. We have also seen that the modifi-
cations of textbooks in Gujarat resulted
in a reformulation of Indian nation-
alism as an essentially militant one,
 Visweswaran, witzel, manjrekar, bhog, chakravarti
which conflated Muslims with terrorists
and reframed Hitler’s legacy as posi-
tive, while more generally (and perhaps
insidiously) inserting mythic themes
and figures into historical accounts.
In California, on the other hand, the
textbook revisions focused mostly on
the ancient civilizations curricula where
the origins of the world’s religions are
discussed, so the emphasis has been less
on introducing religio-mythic figures
and more on reifying Brahminical texts
such as the Rig-Veda as foundational to
Hindu and thus Indian identity. Yet the
notion that the Vedas define Hinduism
also leads to a contradiction in the
Hindutva strategy of separating the caste
system from Hindusim, for it is in the
Rig-Veda that we find the earliest central
evidence and religious justification for
the caste system.37 In dating the origins
of Hinduism to the Vedas, California
and other U.S. textbooks have unwit-
tingly reinforced the Hindutva view that
such texts are definitive of Hindusim
rather than a part of a vibrant, plural-
istic, and constantly changing tradition
that has also included challenges to the
caste system in the forms of bhakti devo-
tional worship.38
The California textbook controversy
takes on added importance because text-
books adopted in California and Texas
tend to set national trends for the adop-
tion of textbooks elsewhere in the United
States. The social studies textbooks in
Texas, where Houston branches of the
VHPA and HSS are extremely active,
are now up for review. At the point of
textbook review, most states are primar-
ily concerned with whether textbooks
meet the state-approved standards, and
public participation in the review pro-
cess is limited to correction of factual
Culture&Society
errors. This structural feature in the
textbook review process helped stymie
Hindutva attempts to introduce more
broad-based ideological content into
California textbooks. After the School
Board reversal and the court verdict in
California, however, Hindu nationalist
organizations appear to have changed
their strategy. Most states allow school
districts to supplement their textbooks
with additional materials. In California
and Texas, Hindu nationalist organiza-
tions have made supplemental materials
freely available to interested teachers.
For example, online “educational”
materials from the ESHI website present
exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims
about Indian history and Hinduism
that are in line with the changes made
to textbooks in India. One slide, for
example, renames the “Khyber Pass”
in present day Afghanistan as the “Pass
in the Himalayas for Foreign Invaders!
Greeks, Muslims, Europeans,” but
of course neglects to mention that
Aryans also entered India through the
same Khyber Pass. Still another slide
announces “NASA images of Rama’s
bridge!” showing an image of Rama and
Sita from the Ramayana counterposed
to an old aerial photograph purport-
ing to show the ruins of an underwater
bridge between the “Tip of India” and
Sri Lanka.39
Such assertions would be laughable
were it not for the Hindutva move-
ment’s success in spreading such mate-
rials among the U.S. Indian Diaspora
through after-school and day-care pro-
grams. Teachers, too, are eager for
supplemental materials to use in the
classroom, especially if they are low-
cost or provided for free; California
teachers have clearly been exposed to
Winter/Spring 2009 [ 1 0 9]
the hindutva view of history
Hindutva materials, as have teachers in
Texas. At a University of Texas Title
VI “Hemispheres” Outreach Workshop
with K–12 schoolteachers this sum-
mer, some teachers from Houston area
schools, perhaps drawing upon simi-
lar anti-immigrant sentiment in the
United States, passionately argued that
since Hindus were the original inhabit-
ants of India, minority populations in
India should be treated like immigrant
foreigners. Thus, regardless of how
challenges to state-adopted textbooks
in Texas and Florida play out in the
future, Hindutva propaganda contin-
ues to circulate and to make its way into
U.S. classrooms.
Notes
1 See Nandini Manjrekar, “The national
curriculum framework in Gujarat—children’s
education in a Hindu Rashtra,” University of Baroda,
5 April 2002 (material submitted to the Editors’
Guild of India), People’s Union for Civil Liberties,
Baroda and Shanti Abhiyan.
2 See “The Need for Strengthening Education
Change” J.B. Rajput, Pioneer, 20 November 2002.
3 For an analysis of Hindu-Americans post-
9/11, see Prema A. Kurien, “Multiculturalism and
‘American’ Religion: The Case of Hindu Indian
Americans” Social Forces 85, no. 2 (December 2006):
723-741.
4 See for example the numerous human rights
reports on the 2002 Hindu nationalist violence
against Muslims in Gujarat: “An Interim Report
to the National Human Rights Commission,”
People’s Union of Civil Liberties, 21 March 2002,
Internet, http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Religion-
communalism/2002/gujarat-nhrc-submission.htm;
“Ethnic Cleansing in Ahmedabad: A Preliminary
Report,” SAHMAT Fact Finding Team, 10-12 March
2002, Internet, http://www.sacw.net/Gujarat2002/
sahmatreport032002.html; National Human
Rights Commission, “Annual Report, 2001-2002,”
20-25 and 268-319, Internet, http://nhrc.nic.in/
Publications/documents/AR01-02e.pdf; “Gujarat
Carnage 2002: A Report to the Nation,” Kamal
Chenoy et. al., 10 April 2002, Internet, http://
el.doccentre.info/eldoc/l53a/GujCarnage.htm;
Human Rights Watch,
“‘We Have No Orders To Save You:’ State
Participation and Complicity in Communal
Violence in Gujarat,” 30 April 2002, Internet,
[ 1 1 0] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Our recommendations to remedy
this are twofold: (1) The U.S. govern-
ment should increase the outreach and
programming budgets for South Asia
Title VI Programs with specially ear-
marked funds to hire additional staff to
develop and widely disseminate academ-
ically vetted supplemental materials on
Hinduism for use in U.S. classrooms.
(2) Policymakers should consider
whether a national panel of South Asia
scholars drawn from federally funded
Title VI South Asia programs should be
created to vet controversial materials in
the event of continued court challenges
to state approved teaching materials on
Hinduism in the United States.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2002/04/30/
state-supported-massacres-gujarat; Amnesty
International, “India: Five Years On—The Bitter
and Uphill Struggle for Justice in Gujarat,” 8 March
2007, Internet, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/
info/ASA20/007/2007/en. On recent violence
against Christians in Orissa see also “Communalism
in Orissa,” Indian People’s Tribunal, September 2006,
Internet, http://www.iptindia.org/main/ipt.
php?Page=Report&Report=40.
5 We must stress however, that while these are
the main U.S. Sangh-affiliated organizations,
there are numerous front organizations the Sangh
uses to advance its agenda which also claim to be
independent of the Sangh. In practice however, these
apparently independent organizations have placed
in key positions of leadership prominent members
of recognized U.S. Sangh organizations. The Sangh
Parivar in India, as well as the United States, also
works through the strategy of placing its members
in positions of leadership in local community or
temple organizations. Two reports by a group of
scholars, The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, are
important for meticulously documenting and tracing
the links between Sangh and front organizations:
“The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the
American Funding of Hindutva” is available online
at http://stopfundinghate.org/sacw/index.html; and
“Unmistakably Sangh: The National Hindu Students
Council and its Hindutva Agenda” is available online
at http://hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org/Report/
iindex1.html. In addition, another important report
on Sangh charitable organizations in the United
Kingdom is “IN BAD FAITH? BRITISH CHARITY
 Visweswaran, witzel, manjrekar, bhog, chakravarti
& HINDU EXTREMISM” (Awaaz: South Asia Watch
Ltd., 2004) available online at: http://www.awaazsaw.
org/ibf/index.htm.
6 As one example, most indefinite detentions
under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) were
against Muslims while few if any violent members of
the Hindu nationalist organizations were ever charged
under this act. See “The Terror of POTA and Other
Security Legislation: Report of the People’s Tribunal
on the Prevention of Terrorism Act and Other
Security Legislation,” (New Delhi, March 2004).
As a result of the overwhelming evidence of the use
of POTA to harass the Muslim community, POTA
was repealed by the Indian government when the
Congress party came to power in 2004.
7 While the idea of Hindutva may have first come
into circulation in the late nineteenth century, V.
D. Savarkar, a former RSS member implicated in
the plot to assassinate Gandhi, first systematized it
in his 1926 political treatise, Hindutva. See Chetan
Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths
(Oxford: Berg, 2001).
8 Internet, http://www.ercwilcom.net/indow-
indow/sad/article.php?child=29&article=28 (date
accessed: 6 December 2005). See also Martha
Nussbaum, “The Education Wars” in The Clash Within:
Democracy, Religious Violence and India’s Future. (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
9 See Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukher-
jee, “The Communalisation of Education and the
History Textbook Controversy: An Overview,” The
Delhi Historian’s Group (Delhi, 2002), 1.
10 U.S. Department of State, “International
Religious Freedom Reports—India (2002-2004),”
Internet, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/ (date
accessed: 5 December 2005).
11 See National Council of Educational Research
and Training, National Curriculum Framework (2000),
35, 13.
12 “Social Science Textbook” for Std. IX, 94.
13 Internet, http://www.india-together.
org/2007/feb/edu-gujtexts.htm#continue (date
accessed: 5 October 2008).
14 See also the forthcoming Nirantar study of
History textbooks in five states. This study has been
conceptualized and coordinated by Nirantar a center
for gender and education studies in Delhi. The
study covers West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and
Uttar Pradesh state textbooks. In addition to these
states, nationally produced textbooks by NCERT and
private publishers have also been studied. The Tamil
Nadu study was coordinated by Dr. V. Geetha, the
West Bengal study by Dr. Paromita Chakravarti, the
Gujarat study by Dr. Nandini Manjrekar, and the
Delhi study by Dipta Bhog.
15 See Marzia Casolari, “Hindutva’s Foreign
Tie-Up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence.” Economic
and Political Weekly 22 January 2000 available online at
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/
ArticlesArchive/casolari.pdf.
Culture&Society
16 See Internet, http://www.petitiononline.com/
cedpra51/petition.html, 11.
17 Gujarat State Board of School Textbooks,
Social Science Std. 9 (Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India,
2005) 11.
18 Gujarat State Board of School Textbooks,
Social Science Std. 9 (Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India,
1997) 43.
19 See Apoorvanand, “Return of the Rightwing
Textbook,” Tehelka, 20 January 2007 available online at
http://www.sacw.net/HateEducation/apoorvJan07.html.
20 See Maria Glod, “Wiping Stereotypes of
India off the books,” Washington Post, Sunday, 17 April
2005, C(07), Internet, http://www.washingtonpost.
com/wp-dyn/articles/A59613-2005Apr16.html
(date accessed 26 October 2008). See also “Fairfax
County School Board Meeting Minutes,” 31 March
2005 on file with authors Witzel and Visweswaran.
21 See the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate
report on the Hindu Student Council “Unmistakably
Sangh: The National Hindu Students Council and
its Hindutva Agenda,” Internet, http://hsctruthout.
stopfundinghate.org/Report/ch2.html#4 (date
accessed: 26 October 2008).
22 Internet, http://www.eshiusa.org/NL-vol1_0-
30805.htm (date accessed: 26 October 2008).
23 Internet, http://www.eshiusa.org/NL-vol1_0-
30805.htm (date accessed: 20 November 2008).
24 Bajpai is one of the founders of WAVES (World
Association for Vedic Studies), Internet, http://www.
hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/indus/waves.
html; see report available online at http://www.
indiadivine.org/audarya/vedic-culture/189265-
abstracts-1st-waves-conference.html.
25 Ibid., see p. 117, edit 22; and p. 122, edit 47.
26 Internet, http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/
ag/ag/documents/hssnotice022706a1.pdf
(date accessed: 7 November 2008).
27 Internet, http://www.southasiafaculty.net/
catext/letters/Indologists_CBE1.pdf.
28 Internet, http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/
documents/hssnotice022706a1.pdf (date accessed: 7
November 2008).
29 Internet, http://southasiafaculty.net/catext/
letters/FacultyCBELetter1.pdf.
30 Internet, http://southasiafaculty.net/catext/
letters/FacultyCBELetter2.pdf.
31 On 6 January 2006, the Curriculum
Commission asked Professors Shiva Bajpai
(Northridge) and Michael Witzel (Harvard) to
debate, for six hours, each one of the 160-odd
proposed changes in an attempt to resolve the issue.
Agreement could easily be reached on obvious errors
and insensitive statements, but not on the four major
points of contention (the Vedic four varna system
and low caste status of Dalits, the status and role of
women in India, the construction of a monolithic
monotheistic Hinduism, and Aryan “invasion” or
migration).
32 These included the Ambedkar Center for
Winter/Spring 2009 [ 1 1 1 ]
the hindutva view of history
Justice and Peace, the Indian Buddhist Association of
America, New Republic India, and Californian Dalit
Sikh temples such as the Guru Ravi Dass Gurdwara,
Federation of Tamil Sangams in North America,
Non-Resident Indians for a Secular and Harmonious
India, the Vaishnava Center for Enlightenment,
the Indian American Public Education Advisory
Council, the Friends of South Asia (FOSA), and the
Coalition against Communalism (CAC).
33 These were 1) “Problems in Identifying
Hinduism with Ancient India: Hinduism is a Plural
Tradition,” 2) “Problems Identifying Ancient India
with Sanskrit: Dual classical traditions in north and
south India, 3) Hinduism and the Caste System, 4)
Women and Hinduism, 5) Other Important Beliefs
of Hinduism: “Ahimsa” (non-violence). See http://
southasiafaculty.net/catext/files/Faculty_overview.
pdf; pp. 3-5; Title VI Committee, “Biogenetic Data
and Historical Scholarship: Sources of Evidence
Regarding ‘Aryan Migration,’” Title VI Centers
Report (presentation, California State Board of
Education, Sacramento, CA, February 27, 2006),
Internet, http://southasiafaculty.net/catext/files/
Faculty_biogenetics.pdf.
34 See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-
Eurasian_research/message/4861; original ruling no
[ 1 1 2 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
longer available on the court website http://www.
saccourt.com/courtrooms/trulings/d19archives/.
35 See http://www.capeem.org/ and Pei-hsuan
Wu, “Hindu Nationalist Groups in the U.S.: An
Overview”
36 This is based on one author’s experience
teaching Indian-American students in discussion-
based courses on contemporary India at the University
of Texas - Austin from 2005 to 2008.
37 Rg Veda,10.90.12.
38 In conflating “ancient civilizations” with the
emergence of Hinduism in India, the California
textbooks also left no room to discuss Tamil lit-
erature, the other Indian classical literary tradition
besides Sanskrit.
39 The formation in question is actually geological
in nature and is about 17 million years old; Hindu
nationalists believe the “bridge” was built 3,500 years
ago to allow Ram to cross from India to Sri Lanka to
defeat Ravana. See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/
news/world/asia/article1572638.ece (date accessed:
27 October 2008). At a Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh
conference in December 2004, one speaker used
similar materials to prove the existence of this “man-
made bridge:” See http://www.hssus.org/content/
view/35/2/ accessed on 10 November 2008.